Safeguard our water

A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN -- one that is eerily similar to pre-Katrina New Orleans -- sits in the center of California. It is the 738,000-acre Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a maze of sloughs, channels and islands that funnel water from the two rivers westward into San Francisco Bay. The problem is that the delta’s waters are kept on track by an estimated 1,100 miles of levees, some dating to the 1860s, that are mostly in poor repair and suffering from sporadic, underfinanced maintenance.

Southern Californians have to be concerned because the delta is the source of an average 20% to 30% of their water. It also provides irrigation water for some of the richest farming land in the world, in the San Joaquin Valley. And though most of the property around the delta is farmland, the area is becoming increasingly developed with housing projects.

Professor Jeffrey Mount of UC Davis calculates that there is a 2-in-3 chance of a massive levee collapse in the next 50 years. Some experts say an earthquake in the region the size of the 1994 Northridge temblor could result in up to 30 levee breaks.

Some levees are maintained by the federal government, but most are the responsibility of local districts, with some state help. It’s not enough. Mount says the levee system needs $1 billion just to bring it up to basic standards, never mind to withstand a natural disaster. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has developed a six-month emergency supply in aquifers and reservoirs. No one knows how long it would take to restore a major collapse, but it would probably be more than half a year.

Even setting aside the danger from a quake or other disaster, the long-term vitality of the delta is in doubt. Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt told a California Legislature committee recently that global warming may cause the sea level to rise, contaminating the delta with saltwater within 50 years. The solution, he said, would be to build a canal or pipeline to carry Sacramento River water around the delta. A similar concept, the Peripheral Canal, was anathema to Northern Californians and environmentalists in the 1980s. They outvoted Southern Californians to defeat the plan in a referendum.

Climate change and the levee problem might provide the conditions needed to win approval of a limited pipeline if there’s no hope of saving the delta as we know it today. If so, work needs to begin now.